


The Devil Lives In My Husband's Body

by HarveyWallbanger



Series: My Wife and My Dead Wife [4]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Experimental Style, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Murder, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Sexual Assault, Victim Blaming, everything ever, terrible people doing terrible things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 22:24:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6095892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A riddle whose answer none can solve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil Lives In My Husband's Body

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a song by Pulsallama, a band in which Ann Magnuson once played. The quote in the summary comes from Fernand Leger's "The Girl With the Pre-Fabricated Heart".  
> As usual, take the warnings seriously. When I say 'graphic depictions of violence', in this particular case, I really, really mean it.  
> I was going to be Captain Mysterious about this, but to make it easier for the reader, I'll just tell you right now that the events of the story occur in reverse order.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

Early morning is for the news. Mid-morning is for talk shows. Noon is for cooking shows.  
But afternoon is for true crime documentaries.  
“Are you sure that this okay for her to watch?” asks Genevieve, lifting up her side of the sheet in tandem with Joan.  
“Please,” says Joan, nodding toward their patient, “She loves it.”  
“Are you sure? Isn't this bad for her recovery?”  
“What, you think she's going to jump out of the chair and murder us because she saw herself on TV? Who knows if she'd even recognize herself.”  
Genevieve frowns. “She recognizes someone up there.”  
“Do you know him, Barbara?” asks Joan.  
“Jim,” Barbara rasps.  
“It's not Jim, honey.”  
“No, that is Jim Gordon,” Genevieve says, pointing at the TV screen, “He started his testimony today. There's Harvey Dent, next to him.”  
“I'd bang his gavel, if you know what I mean.”  
Genevieve giggles.  
Barbara exhales, “I know him.” She tries to raise her hand, but can lift it only half an inch off of her lap.  
Joan and Genevieve look at the screen, at the pale man with dark hair. His face is twisted into a scowl.  
“They say that she was involved with a serial killer,” Genevieve says, and shrugs.  
“I think she could do better than him.”  
“He's okay,” Genevieve says half-heartedly, “He'd look better if they let him wash his hair, and gave him something to wear other than scrubs. No one looks good in these.”  
Joan laughs. “Speak for yourself!”

After this is over, if Alfred never again sees that bloody face staring out at him from the television, it'll be too soon. The man looks like a fucking serial killer. That pale face, always unsettlingly damp with sweat. Those eyes that seem to follow you around the room. There's something off about his features, too; the proportions aren't right. It's a fun house mirror reflection of a face.  
After staring, himself, for a few minutes, he finally asks Bruce, “Are you sure it's a good idea for you to be watching that?”  
“I'm interested in the way that the press has been following this case. There are all kinds of implications for the treatment of the mentally ill in the legal system. The killer's lucid, but also seems to be suffering from paranoid delusions,” Bruce adds, with an enthusiasm both amusing and unsettling.  
“Be that as it may, it's a bit strong, isn't it?”  
“What do you mean?”  
Oh, dear. How to tell Bruce what he means to protect him from without actually putting it right in his face? The eternal bloody dilemma. The eternal impossible labor. Show the boy what evil looks like without letting him see it. But Bruce has seen more evil in his short life than most adults. A little bit more isn't going to hurt him. Alfred sighs. “The details of the murders are especially unsavory.”  
“You mean the way the bodies were disposed of? I know all about that. What I wonder is, why didn't the killer go to more trouble to cover his tracks? Someone just stumbled upon the grave, and called the police.”  
“He's bloody lunatic, isn't he?”  
Bruce frowns. “That's a gross over-simplification.”  
“Call it what you like, but the man's not playing with a full deck.”  
“I wonder how Detective Gordon's taking it.”  
“Why's that?”  
“Well, he's going to be called to testify for the prosecution, and he has a relationship to the killer.”  
Alfred raises his eyebrows.  
“I mean that it's obvious that this is a significant case to him, personally.”  
“A significant bloody embarrassment, more like.”  
Bruce frowns. “Should I... call him, write to him?”  
“It might be a bit tricky. Best to leave it alone, for now.” Emily Post doesn't exactly advise on these kinds of situations. “Don't you have homework, then?”  
“This is my homework. It's for my current events elective.”  
Alfred shakes his head. “Well, don't get too wrapped up in it; we're having company for supper.”  
“Oh, yes, that's right. Mr. Fox. I forgot that he's coming to dinner tonight.”  
“Yeah, well, once the dust settled, I just thought it'd be nice to have him over when I wasn't asking him to toil away in a basement.”  
“You don't have to explain, Alfred.”  
Fucking insufferable- him being so young, and looking at you like he can see all the way into your heart and soul, know everything, and understand perfectly. At least he's still struggling in maths. It wouldn't be right if he were brilliant at everything.  
Bruce looks back at the TV, frowning absently, as one of the commentators starts in again on the state the bodies were found in, and what it means about the killer's psychological state. No, Bruce isn't yet up to everything he's going to have to face in the world, and he's still so very young.  
“It might be nice, Master Bruce, if you were to help in the preparation of said supper. He's your guest as much as mine.”  
Smiling now, Bruce stands, and switches off the telly.

“Fucking Gotham. This place makes Basin City look like Smallville.”  
“What, now?”  
“'What, now?' What else has everyone been talking about for the past week?”  
“Shit, yeah. That was fucked-up.”  
“Tell me about it. And do you think we even got the real story? Even working here?”  
“Hell, no. They always hold some shit back. I heard that the body they found in that hole was completely fucked-up: hacked to pieces; decapitated. I heard that the fucker even cut out his heart.”  
“'His'? I thought it was a woman. That it was some fucked-up sex murder, and she had a candy bar shoved up her pussy.”  
“No, it was a lipstick.”  
“No, you're both wrong. It was a man, and he had a ten-inch dildo in his ass.”  
“A man? No way. It was a woman, and she was cut up, but she didn't have anything stuck up her twat.”  
“I heard that it was a man and a woman, that the guy was doing them both, and-”  
“I heard that it was a bunch of uniforms who were under the mistaken impression that their job description included standing around and gossiping.”  
They make contrite noises, and go through the motions of getting to work, but the second that Detective Bullock shuffles away, they assemble once more.  
“Fucking drunk-ass motherfucker has some nerve, talking about people not doing their job.”  
“I heard that he was fucking the guy.”  
“Wait- which guy?”  
“The killer.”  
“No way. I heard that it was Gordon who was fucking the killer. That they were in on the murders together.”  
“Fuck off. If you were married to a hot piece of ass like the M.E. would you fuck with some skinny weird-o fuck? Anyway, if Gordon's queer, I'll eat my fucking hat.”  
“What, you have information?”  
“Solid gold gaydar, my friend.”  
“Fuck that shit.”  
“But no, I'm serious. I heard that Gordon was fucking this guy, and even helped him get away with it for a while, until I guess someone started to suspect him.”  
“I still say it was Bullock.”  
“With who, Gordon, or the other guy?”  
“Maybe Gordon was fucking them both.”  
“That's bullshit. I mean, never mind the idea of him fucking two guys- if he's fucking them, and his wife, how does he find the energy to get any work done?”  
“Maybe he's on drugs.”  
“Shit- that's another thing I heard. The killer was on drugs, and they were making him hallucinate. I know this guy at Arkham, and he told me- Shit. Here comes Bullock again. I'll tell you later.”

Leslie won't stop crying.  
It's not an abnormal response.  
Jim supposes.  
Still, he wants to ask her why.  
But it's something he's just supposed to know.  
Finally, he ventures, “You're taking this really hard.”  
“I know,” she sighs, blowing her nose, “It's not like we were really close, but I knew them both, Jim. I knew that something was wrong with him. Or I should have known. Why didn't I know?”  
“He was hiding it well.” Never mind that he also had Jim, Harvey, and an entire precinct full of cops fooled.  
“I heard the rumors. People would find him talking to himself, and weird things started happening at work, but he had an answer for everything- and I guess that, really, I just didn't want to know.”  
“You can't blame yourself.”  
“But I just let her walk into it. I set up a double date, for Christ's sake! If I don't know a serial killer when I see one, how the hell am I fit to work with the police? And if I can't keep a girl from dating him, what good am I as a human being?”  
“Leslie,” he begins, but he doesn't know where it's meant to go. It's too much, he wants to tell her. This is too much grief for one person to feel for another. How can she possibly feel this much? Where in her body is there room for it? “You did your best. You tried to be a friend to both of them, but Nygma was obviously way more damaged than anyone could have guessed, and Kristen, well, she liked danger. Everyone knew that about her.”  
Leslie narrows her eyes dangerously. “Are you saying that she deserved this?”  
“No. I'm not-”  
“What about Tom Dougherty? You know about him, don't you? What Edward did to him?”  
“Yeah. I know about him.”  
“Do you think he deserved it?”  
“No. Of course not.”  
“So, if he didn't, how could she?”  
“Neither of them did. They both just... met the wrong person. That's it. How someone lives their life can have a lot to do with how it ends, but you're right, they didn't deserve to die like that.” God, he hopes that's good enough.  
It must be, because Leslie throws her arms around him, and all he has to do now is hold her. There are no words required, so he can do this. He lets himself relax a little, in her arms, as she softens in his. This, he can do well.  


Why the fuck does the phone always ring when you're either asleep, or in the can? At least Dave was only asleep, this time. It's Joe. From fucking school. Before Dave can ask him why he suddenly decided he wants to shoot the shit, after all these years, Joe says, “You have to turn on the fucking TV. You will not believe what's going on.”  
“Uhhh... fuck,” Dave rolls over, gets the remote, “What channel?”  
“Any channel that has local news. It's all over the place.”  
Dave catches the reporter mid-sentence: “-other Gotham City employees, Kristen Kringle, an office worker, and Officer Tom Dougherty. Captain Nathaniel Barnes issued a statement today, promising swift justice in the prosecution of these vicious crimes, regardless of Mr. Nygma's relationship to the police department, or his claim of mental illness.”  
“Fuck,” Dave whispers.  
“Can you believe it?” Joe laughs, “Nygma finally lost it, and actually killed someone-”  
But Dave's already out of bed, staggering into the bathroom, pushed up against the counter and throwing up into the sink.

Nygma's smiling. God help them all.  
“I want to make a full confession.”  
“Damn right, you do,” Harvey mutters, and gets a glare from Nygma's lawyer and a warning look from Jim, “So, I guess this means that you've moved on from saying that your dog made you do it.”  
“Oh, I'm certainly being set up, Detective Bullock,” Nygma sighs, “But I also must concede that I'm fully responsible for the murders of Miss Kringle, Officer Tom Dougherty, and that other fellow, whose name I don't know.”  
“Okay,” says Jim, “Why did you do it?”  
“Why did I do what?”  
“The murders,” Harvey says slowly, rolling his eyes.  
“Which one? Each had a very different motive and modus operandi. Surely, as detectives, you can appreciate the nuance-”  
“I'm just gonna appreciate it from the other side of the glass,” Harvey says and stands, “excuse me.”  
Here, the air's just a little bit easier to breathe. Fuck Nygma and his fucking _nuance_. And motherfuck him for thinking that he's some kind of intellectual brother in arms with Harvey and Jim. It's all a fucking ego trip. That's why guys like him do this shit. It's not about jealousy, or love, or whatever other line of bullshit Nygma might be trying to sell, like he's just like any other normal guy, and what normal guy couldn't commit a _crime passionnel_ under the right circumstances, am I right? By the end of the fucking interview, he'll have it twisted around, like Kringle had it coming, for having even seen a dick before she met Nygma, and Dougherty had it coming just for existing. Though, Dougherty did have it coming, just for existing while being a fucking scum bag, and Harvey always knew Dougherty was trouble, but he still didn't deserve to end up like that. A bag of pulverized bones at the bottom of the fucking river. A pile of slurry left to drain into the sewers. Fuck. This is fucking disgusting, and Harvey's not drunk enough.  
He goes to the locker room, chugs what's left of the bottle in his locker, then cracks a window, drops the empty bottle, and listens with satisfaction as it smashes onto the pavement.  
That's what Nygma's all a-fucking-bout. Breaking shit just to see the mess. Only, it isn't bottles; it's fucking people. Jesus- the state Kringle was in. When he saw her, Harvey'd crossed himself for the first time in twenty years. He thought Gordon was going to vomit right there. A couple of rookies did, turning around and retching at the same time, like some kind of ballet.  
Fuck this. He's not doing anybody any good here.  
“Taking a sick day?” Barnes asks him on the way out. Something's gone out of Barnes. He doesn't have that sound to his voice like he's half laughing at Harvey, half insulting him with every word.  
“Gordon's handling it.”  
“I can't look at him, either. Nygma.”  
“Yeah, well, you didn't work with him.”  
“I work with everyone in this building, Detective.”  
“Yeah. Right. I guess you do. I just can't be here right now.”  
“Is there room for two on that guilt trip, or is it a solo affair?”  
“Aren't you afraid I'm going to rat you out to your superiors for drinking on the job?”  
Barnes shrugs. “You'd just be incriminating yourself.”  
“They didn't make you Captain for nothing.”  
Then, they're at the bar, and it's easy to forget, for whole minutes at a time, that he actually fucking hates Barnes. It's far more urgent that he attend to his hatred for Nygma, which is stuck in Harvey, deep down, like a thorn in his fucking side.  
“There were so many- so many fucking times,” Harvey says, hitting the table with his finger, “when I thought, One day, that crazy fuck's going to kill somebody. Only, I thought that he'd just mow us all down, instead of picking 'em off, one by one.”  
“It was all about Kringle, though. He was jealous. He killed her boyfriend, and then, I guess, when fucking her wasn't enough, he killed her, too.”  
“It had shit to do with Kringle. Do you think she mattered to him, in any kind of, uh, material way? No. She could have been any broad.”  
“You don't think he felt like he had a connection to her, like he loved her?”  
Harvey laughs. “You don't do that to someone you love.”  
“I don't know. I've seen some horrible things done in the name of love.”  
“That's not love. If you hit someone, if you kill someone, you don't love them. And you're a fucking lying-ass motherfucker if you think you do. I don't care if it's your girl, your wife, or your kid. The second you do something like that, you lose the right to talk about love.”  
“I think it's more complicated than that.”  
“You can think whatever the fuck you want. It doesn't mean you're not wrong.”  
Barnes shrugs. “You've got some awfully rigid ideas for someone who's supposed to act with neither fear nor favor.”  
“And you're awfully quick to defend some bottom-feeder you'd probably take out back and shoot, if he didn't work for you.”  
“Yeah, and he killed two other people who served this city, so what do you say to that?”  
“I say that I need another fucking drink. I can still feel my face.”  
“I'll get these.”  
“And it's not even my birthday.”  
“To getting the bad guys,” Barnes says when he returns, touching his glass to Harvey's, “Whoever they are.” The way he fixes Harvey with his gaze like that has to be significant, but fucked if Harvey's going to try to figure out what it all means. Harvey's had enough of all of these fucking riddles.

Harvey Dent holds up his hand. “Don't get up, Captain Barnes. This is merely a courtesy call. I wanted to tell you, in person, that, even if Nygma puts in a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, my office intends to pursue this case to the fullest extent of the law,” Dent says, drawing himself up to his full height.  
The first action that suggests itself to Barnes is to slap him back down again, but Dent's not his enemy. He says evenly, “I'd expect nothing less.”  
This is enough to deflate him. “All right,” Dent says, both relieved and humbled, and looks Barnes in the eye as he holds out his hand. Barnes shakes it. There's a feeling of goodwill spreading through his chest, and it's time to crush it.  
“If that's it, get out of my office, and do your job.”  
“Yes, sir,” Dent says, with the earnestness and defiance that only the young can possess, and sees himself out.  
Barnes wishes he still drank. He wishes he still did any of the stuff he used to do. It was easy, back then. Nothing unwanted imposed on him for long. The second it peered around the corner, he knew how to smash it into oblivion.  
Corruption's liquid. It slips into every available seam. There are cracks you didn't know existed until you look down, and your hands are filthy. This place is rotten. Level the building and salt the earth, and something vile would still grow in the stinking swamp of accumulated depravity.  
Tears wouldn't be inappropriate right now, but Barnes hasn't cried sober in almost thirty years, and he hasn't cried at all in more than a decade. He's been on enough twelve-step treadmills, anyway, to know that he wouldn't be crying for the dead officer, or that poor dead girl, but for himself. Self-pity's the one high you can't get away from. It's a drug that's always as close as your next fuck-up, and as long as you're breathing, you're going to keep fucking up.  
The only salvation, for any of them, now, is going to come from crucifying Nygma. It's always your first instinct to defend your men, but when they start killing each other, you're fucked. No- your allegiance has to fall with the dead. The living can go on to fuck up another day, but the dead are blameless; beyond mistakes.  
Fucking pathetic. All of them. There was a fox in their hen house, for years, and no one could see what he was up to. Barnes can only wriggle out of accountability to a certain extent: Nygma was someone else's hire; Nygma was a criminalist, not a cop; Barnes only actually met the man a handful of times. It was there, though, in the air. Cops gossip. More than one of them knew that Nygma was wrong, and if Barnes hadn't been so sure that he could ferret out every kind of evil in the dark by scent, alone, he might have listened to what people were saying, instead of dismissing it as playground rumor.  
But you can go in all kinds of circles, try to talk yourself into or out of whatever you're feeling. The feeling's fucking useless. It's the doing that matters. In this case, there's not much left for him to do. Dent's going to sweep in on his white horse, make sure that Nygma rots in Arkham- or, hopefully, Blackgate- because Barnes has seen crazy- and it's not Nygma.  
The whole thing makes too much sense. Crazies don't kill their girlfriends out of sexual jealousy. Crazies kill because some guy on the train was staring at them, or because they thought they were back in the fucking war, or because the voices in their head wouldn't shut up about it. A crazy who kills is in pain. You have only to look at him, at the 'Oops, you got me' expression on his face to know that Nygma's not in pain.  
Though, God willing, he'll soon be.

They say that the first one is the hardest. But Josie's seen dead bodies before. She's seen them shot and stabbed, beaten and strangled. She's seen them pulled out of the river after a week. She's seen them hanging, for hours or days, the blood pooling in the extremities. The apprenticeship of a Gotham City police officer is short, but extensive. Without much prelude, she was thrown into the crush of violent action- and that suits her fine. She didn't want safety, behind a desk or in a classroom. She wanted- She doesn't know what, but she knows that it's something more than mere safety.  
She heard that the dead girl- Kristen- was like that, too, but in another way. People say horrible things when they think that you're not listening, and they say truly vile things when they know you are. Josie knows all of the stories, and she's not proud to say that she thought, when she heard that Kristen was missing, At least that won't be me. Josie doesn't mind danger, but she doesn't court it. Try to domesticate it. Take it home with her. She doesn't love it. Not the way Kristen did. People said that Kristen just left town, to be with some guy she used to date, a cop who worked at the precinct but quit abruptly a few months earlier. Josie knew, though. It wasn't the first time she'd heard about girls just disappearing. They're never, as the well-meaning say, someplace else, excited and happy to be starting a new life. No matter how much you might want it to be true.  
When it comes, they don't have time to treat the anonymous tip like it might be a prank. Gordon hears the name, looks at Bullock, and then, they're on their way, her and Pinkney and some others in tow, with a couple of lab guys from the night shift meeting them there. It's a long drive, so long that Josie's starting to think that it has to be some kind of fool's errand, or set-up, or trap. When they finally get there, it's the national park. In elementary school, she went up there on field trips. She follows the same path she followed then, when her assigned buddy walked next to her, while the teacher told them which plants and animals to check off on their scavenger hunt work sheet.  
Josie doesn't throw up. A couple of other uniforms do. Even some of the detectives turn away, hands over their mouths. Josie looks, though. She makes herself look. She makes herself remember that it's a person in there. Someone's daughter.  
God, what a fucking cliché.  
But it's what she has to hold onto. To keep from spinning out into ugly, lifeless space.  
Kristen was a real person, once. Before this. She'll be a real person again. Once they haul her out of that hole, where a stranger was thrown unceremoniously on top of her. They'll take her to the M.E.'s office. Dr. Thompkins will free her from that profane little coffin, and lay her out on the table. The doctor will gather physical evidence, then wash the body, and begin her examination. In taking Kristen apart a little bit more, she'll put her back together. Eventually, Kristen will get a real burial, by people who love her. She has all of that coming. It isn't much. It's not really anything. But it'll be over.  
For the living, it's just beginning.  
The D.A. issues an arrest warrant before they're even back at the precinct. They don't have to leave again, because the suspect's already there, in the building with them. It's just a matter of going down the hall, she and Pinkney following Detectives Gordon and Bullock, down to the Medical Examiner's office.  
“Drop it,” Gordon snarls.  
Nygma's eyes widen, and his mouth opens, before he looks at the scalpel in his hand, and sets it down. On the table before him is a dead mouse. Josie neither wants nor needs to know.  
“Wha-” Nygma gets out, before Gordon's spinning him around, cuffing him and reading him his rights.  
Dr. Thompkins comes in, gets as far as, “Jim-” before Gordon barks, “Lee, not now.”  
The hurt flickers over her face, chased by humiliation, fear, anger, before she closes down and leaves the room again.  
In a few minutes, it's over. Dr. Thompkins has vanished. Gordon and Bullock start on the paperwork. Nygma sits in his cell, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, all the while saying that it wasn't him. It wasn't him. It was her. She did this. She's ruining his life. She won't stay dead. She's in his house. She's in his bed. He tried to reason with her, to placate her, but she always wants more. She did something to someone called Oswald. She's insanely jealous. She could never handle competition. She tried to kill herself once because his father danced with someone else at a party. When she, herself, couldn't keep her hands off of any man who got close enough to touch.  
“And I mean, any man,” he says to Josie, gripping the bars of the cell, his face contorted into something between a leer and a jester's grin.  
“Let go of the bars,” Josie says flatly, “or I'll mace you.”  
Looking startled, Nygma backs off, then he laughs, “Women are all the same. You want attention, but only the right kind. But what is the right kind? You let one man be all over you, but you won't even give another the time of day.”  
“Yeah, we like to decide who touches us. We're funny that way.”  
Then, Nygma gets this exaggeratedly pensive look, and he says, “Though, it's not just women. Men can be like that, too. He drinks so much, and he takes those pills, but you drug him once- for his own good!- and he acts like it's the end of the world. This is all him, you know. He's so sensitive. Or, maybe, they're working together...”  
Josie shakes her head. This is for the detectives to listen to. She's just a uniform. And she neither wants nor needs to know.

“I need you to check something out for me.”  
“Sure. What is it?”  
“Bodies,” Oswald says, conversationally, over the rim of his tea cup, “I need you to see if they are where I think they are.”  
“What am I looking for?”  
“One is a man, a hunter. The other one is in metal box, underneath him,” Oswald holds up a hand, “Don't move anything around too much. You shouldn't have to dig too far to find him; just go down enough to make sure that he's there. She'll be underneath.”  
“So, let me make sure I understand. Just disturb the earth enough to make sure that he's where he's supposed to be. And just trust that she's underneath.”  
“I don't want you to destroy evidence. It's important that everything stay as pristine as possible,” Oswald draws tight his mouth, in that way Gabe saw Mrs. Kapelput do a couple of times, “Then, I need you to call the police, and tell them where they can find the bodies. I also need you to tell them that the dead woman is Kristen Kringle, and that it was Edward Nygma who committed both murders.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Thank you, Gabe.”  
Of course, Gabe wants to protest. To say that it'd be easier to just kill Nygma. There are plenty of ways to make a man suffer for what he's done. It's a sure thing, too. There's no neater resolution than a bullet in the brain, and once you've gotten your ya-ya's out, you owe it to both him and yourself to give him a clean, a certain end. Start getting fancy, introducing outside parties, though, and you make it easy for something to go wrong. In his way, Oswald's brilliant. No one thinks like that kid does. But sometimes, he just thinks too much. He makes it difficult when it doesn't have to be. Difficult for himself, and difficult for Gabe, because once the words come out of Oswald's mouth, he's done. It's up to Gabe to make the thing run. Oswald can dream big, with his head in the clouds, but it's Gabe down here, with his hands in the dirt.  
This time, literally. A few feet into the ground, Gabe sees the telltale florescent vest, and he knows he's found his man. He puts everything back the way he found it, and drives into town. There are a couple of their guys watching Nygma in the precinct, in case he gets wise, and tries to run. It'd be the easiest thing in the world to tell them to just take care of this schmuck, and later make up a story about him doing something unexpected that needed immediate attention. Oswald might even thank them. God knows, Gabe would be doing him a favor. Oswald needs to learn to let things go. Whatever went on between those two, Gabe doesn't know for sure, but he can guess, and once you start using your business connections to take care of personal problems, you're on your way to a world of pain. Gabe has his hand on the phone. He dials the first digit. He sighs, and puts the phone away.  
Ah- fuck it. He's too good an employee to start doing favors no one asked for. Oswald's built his little machine; let him see how well it works for him. Gabe's done his best to get it started, but now, it's out of his hands. He takes out a different phone, and dials 911.

“Hey, how'd it work out the other night? You get what you were looking for?” Sometimes, the sound of Dave's own voice makes him feel sick. But if he wanted to feel good about himself, he'd quit dealing drugs and go work with orphan kitty cats.  
But Ed doesn't want any fucking small talk. “Do you believe in ghosts?”  
“Not even a little.”  
Ed frowns. “I think I'm being haunted.”  
“Who you gonna call?” Dave asks, then doubles over, tittering. Ed doesn't think that's even the slightest bit funny. Fuck that guy. “Why do you think you're being haunted?”  
“Things happen that have no rational explanation.”  
“Like?” He holds opens the door to the roof for Ed, then follows him out. He's gonna need a cigarette if he's going to have a deep conversation about the paranormal.  
“The other night, I spoke to a dead woman.”  
“Cool,” says Dave around his cigarette, “Was she hot?”  
“No. She was cold. She's dead.”  
“So, you touched her, and shit?”  
“Well, no, but I assume. The dead usually are.”  
“How do you know she's dead?”  
“Oh, because I killed her.”  
The smoke goes down the wrong way as he starts to laugh, and then, he's bent at the waist, coughing. “Fuck you, Ed!” Dave laughs, “Don't do that!”  
“I'm not joking. She was my girlfriend, and I killed her.”  
“Uh-huh. And that's why you're up here, enjoying my secondhand smoke, and not on your way to Mexico.”  
“I have no intention of absconding. Gotham is my home.”  
“Some home,” Dave snorts, “This has to be the most fucked-up place in the world. Okay. So, you killed this girl, and you're telling me, why?”  
“You work with the insane. I'm trying to understand why she can't let go.”  
“Maybe she's pissed that you killed her?”  
“No. She wanted to die. She had a proclivity for violent men. If it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else.”  
“So, you just did her a favor.”  
Edward looks so relieved. “Exactly. I knew you'd understand.”  
One of these days, Dave's going to finish the experimental novel he started back in high school. He has so much fucking material, now. Maybe enough for two novels.

Edward never stops moving. He gets up at least once in the night to go to the bathroom. In bed, he tosses and turns. He wraps around Oswald, touches him. He talks in his sleep, too.  
“...The park,” he mutters.  
“What's in the park, Edward?” Oswald whispers in his ear, then sucks his earlobe.  
“Kristen,” Edward exhales, “and the other man.”  
“Which other man?”  
“Mmm... the hunter.”  
“What are they doing in the park?”  
“Decomposing.”  
“That's where you buried them.”  
“Mmm... by the picnic. You know where.”  
“Thank you, Edward,” Oswald says, and kisses him.  
Either Edward's an absurdly sound sleeper, or he's faking. Oswald doesn't really care, either way. It's... sweet. The notion of using Edward's body against him, for once. For Edward to be the one who's manipulated, made to feel things he might not want to. For Edward to be touched in ways he'll never know about. It's easier than usual to make him come. Even completely awake, he goes off if you look at his dick for too long, but now, it happens in a matter of seconds from the time that Oswald presses their bodies together.  
When he comes, Edward can't be saying what Oswald thinks he's saying. Oswald has to have heard that wrong.  
“Oh,” Edward says, now obviously awake, “I'm so sorry.”  
“What do you mean?” Oswald says, fluttering his eyelashes. In the dark, Edward can't see it, but it amuses Oswald.  
“I was asleep again, and I...”  
“You were asleep? I didn't know. You seemed pretty coherent.”  
“Was I talking in my sleep again? What was I saying?” Edward demands.  
“All sorts of nasty things,” Oswald says, with a twist of his hips, “Do you want me to tell you what they were?”  
Edward's so fucking easy. “Yeah,” he says, kissing Oswald's cheek, the corner of his mouth, “tell me.”  
So fucking easy. At this point, it's a little disgusting, but Oswald's learned that it's best to find something to enjoy about an unpleasant situation.  
And, really, there's so much to enjoy about this one.

As soon as he wakes up, he knows that something's wrong.  
Edward brings him a cup of tea, and sits down on the bed next to him. “Hey, sleepyhead,” he says, with a toothy smile, “It's good to see you in the land of the living.”  
“What happened?” Oswald asks, narrowing his eyes.  
“You overdid it a little bit. It really isn't good for you to drink if you're going to take that medication.”  
Oswald tries to remember. The last time he can recall taking his medicine is late in the afternoon. The afternoons are deadly. Edward, at least, provides some entertainment; when Oswald's alone, the house is hollow and dark. With all of the nonsense surrounding Galavan's murder, he doesn't dare go outside, unless he's with Gabe, and it's for work. More and more, Oswald's beginning to understand how his mother got to be the way she was. Taking drugs is about all Oswald can do. It is true that he was drinking last night. But Oswald knows what a hang over feels like, and he knows what it feels like to lose control when he's drinking. There are memories, muddled, jagged, incongruous, but they're there. Last night, after a certain point, is a complete blank. He can only actually recall drinking one glass of wine. From the bottle that Edward brought home, that had that peculiar aftertaste-  
Of course.  
“I must have,” Oswald says slowly, “I don't feel well.”  
“I'm not surprised,” Edward says with a gently scolding laugh, and Oswald wants to cut his throat. Nothing would feel better right now than to catch the spray of Edward's blood in his face, like his come the other night-  
And, Jesus Christ, what did Edward do to him?  
Calmly, he drinks his tea, lets Edward bring him toast, as well. “I want to take a bath,” he says, in the slightly irritated way he usually does when he wants Edward to do something for him that he, himself, could actually do.  
“I'll fill the tub,” Edward says, and kisses his forehead. Oswald would make a vertical slit, slicing through the windpipe. Edward would suffocate, unable to make a sound, as he drowned in his blood. That would finally shut him up.  
In the bathroom, Oswald undresses. He was put to bed fully dressed, and upon examination, his body shows no unusual bruises or abrasions. He doesn't feel like he's been penetrated in any way. There are no traces of fluids.  
Which, in a way, makes it worse. Rape, at least, would have made a certain amount of sense. He's always known that Edward has it in him. It would be grotesque. But not unexpected. Oswald is beginning to suspect that the adventure began and ended with drugging him. It speaks to a... rehearsal. As though Edward's testing something, by degrees. To see how it works, and to see what he can get away with.  
Oswald's forced to ask himself if he might not be looking at a cozy little place in the woods, all his own. Probably next to the girlfriend, because Edward thinks that he's such a romantic. Granted, it's not the first time someone's plotted to kill Oswald. It's just the first time that it was through no fault of Oswald's own. As is every detail of this rotten little affair, it's alien and revolting. Oswald can handle being hated, being blamed, even, for others' foolishness in trusting him, but what is this? He's now an object, to be moved around and taken apart according to Edward's whims.  
Glumly, he sucks his lower lip. When you grow up ugly, all anybody thinks you are is a body. Because reality's been so unkind to you, it seems, you lose the right to dream. You can't be allowed to hope that, one day, someone will love you. Or, even more incredibly, that one day, you'll wake up, and find that you've turned into a swan.  
Oswald certainly never turned into a swan. Just a penguin, he thinks, submerging himself. He comes up, pushes his hair out of his face. But deep waters, and all of that.  
Deep, deep, cold waters. Where not a thing is visible. Except, of course, to him.

* * *

You're nothing but a body, in the end. When you're eleven, men start looking at you. They watch you walk. Coming home from a friend's house, after dark, they howl at you from cars. Your mother starts making you stay home at night, or else driving you to anyplace you have to go. You're young, but without asking, you somehow know exactly what she fears. You get a little older, and people say that you have power, but you don't know what it could be. Not when your male relatives start looking at you, and you can't, for all your supposed power, make them stop. _What a little woman you're turning into, Kristen_ , everyone says. It always sounds like a threat.  
But then, there's college, and you move away. You live in a sorority house, cushioned by other women. Some of them look at you, too, but it's not scary. Sometimes, you let them touch, and it's good. You're still wondering, though, about the power you're supposed to have. You've yet to see any evidence of it, but people wouldn't say it if it weren't true. It probably only works on men. And it probably only works when you know you're using it.  
So, you start trying use it, what you think it must be. If you ask them to, boys will do your homework for you. They call you pretty, and make you laugh. If they do it enough, you let them take you out and buy you things. They walk around with you on their arm, shit-eating grins on their faces as their friends can only stare. It's a novelty. But it isn't power.  
If you're powerful, people are yours to command. You don't have to give them anything, because they don't expect anything. The boys all expect something in return, you'll learn, for even the smallest kindness. They just let you get used to be treated nicely before they demand compensation. There is, you're given to understand, an economic scale. Dinner equals a blow job. A really nice dinner, or remembering your birthday, or buying you lingerie means that you'd better put out. Jewelry means anal. This, you hear from a friend who is engaged. No man's ever given you jewelry before. You're not sure you want it, now.  
It changes a little bit after college. The boys turn into men, who have a little bit more self control. In some respects. The first time a man hits you, you spend a week trying to figure out what you could have done wrong. The second time a man hits you, you begin to put it together. It's economics, again. Instead of paying, now, for affection, you're paying for the right to simply be yourself. Being obliging is so wearying, and you're forced to the realization that you never feel more like yourself than when you're needling them. You're unexpectedly adept at cruelty, at finding all of the little places where it hurts to be someone else. You're a good girl, though, so you always let the man make the first move. He calls you fat. You say that he must like them that way, because his mother's such a heifer. Smack. He says that you only fucked women in the past because you couldn't handle a real man. _Well, I'm certainly not looking at one, now. If you meet one, though, send him my way._ Slap. As easy as you are to bruise, they're pathetically easy to hurt. Maybe you do have power, after all.  
If they're all hunters, so are you. You've yet to find a man who can handle you. The slightest insult to their ideas about themselves, and they crumble, leaving you bloody but satisfied. One day, though, there'll be a man strong enough to take all you have to give without feeling like he has to make you pay. If they can't help the way that they are, certainly, you can't help the way that you are. What's love but an equal trade of injuries?  
Arnold Flass might be a lot of things, but he's not the kind of sad little boy you're used to. You call him a two-bit thug with delusions of grandeur, and he laughs, gently pulls you into an embrace and says that he happens to know that you like all of his bits. You giggle, then, in spite of yourself, and he kisses you. That one doesn't count; you were soft-balling him. You tell him that you sometimes think you could leave him for a girl. He gets a weird look on his face, and then tells you a long, winding story the point of which, you think, when he finally gets to the end of it, is that he thought he was gay for a solid year in high school, and while he still sometimes wants men, he guesses that he just prefers women, now.  
Then, he has to go and get himself arrested, and Edward Nygma finds you crying in Records, and that's when things start to get bad.  
Tom's boring. He's predictable. He's exactly what you've always gotten, and it's just not fun anymore. Goading him is automatic, and you start to feel like you're looking for a specific response, but you don't quite know what it is. Your therapist says that you have self esteem issues, makes you write down nice things about yourself, but it's not that. You like yourself fine. She says that you subconsciously feel like you don't deserve any better. No- you're just not sure that 'better' exists. You've been dating men since you were in high school, and you feel like you've seen just about all there is to see. So, it's either wait for Arnold to get out of jail, or just date girls all the time. Girls are fun, but you don't have any real feeling for them. Maybe you're just not trying hard enough. But you're tired, and you don't want to try anymore.  
Tom disappears. He 'Dear Jane's you, like this is junior high, and you don't get so much as a call, rubbing it in your face that he's so happy, shacked up with some other girl. There has to be another girl. A man will only leave a steady source of sex if he has someone waiting in the wings. Maybe your looks are fading. You stare yourself down in the mirror, but you look the same as you always have. One day, though, you're going to see a stranger. That's what happened to your mother. You'd better hurry up, before it happens to you. You'd better stop playing games, and trying to make it mean something. You'd better lose those ideas about excitement and true romance. You'd better just pick a man, and stick with him. Hold on tight to him, because who knows when another one will come along. You don't want to end up like Aunt Irene, living alone, and working in a coffee shop for the rest of your life. You don't want to end up covering up the gray with bleach, giving yourself Ava Gardner brows into your sixties.  
In the end, it's easy to accept Edward's offer. If nothing else, it means he'll stop asking. Something about his persistence reminds you of the men who used to promise you all kinds of things to get into their cars- but Edward's not like that. He's weird, but he's really a nice man. He'd never hurt you.  
But, oh, yes, he will. You'll feel, above all else, like such a fool. You can't win for losing. It's never good. Even when you are. Even when you take the safe, sensible option, behave like a grown-up for once in your life, stop trying to be a bitch or an ice queen or a femme fatale. You let yourself start to like him, to see all of the good things that you told yourself you were unnecessarily cruel for ignoring. All he wanted was a chance, and you _goddamn gave it to him_. And this is what you get. Lied to, and stalked, and controlled, by this little, this little _nothing_ -  
And it's still not enough for him, to have done all of that. He can't just slap you and laugh, the way any normal man would.  
He's hurting you, truly hurting you, and you can't make him stop. He keeps saying these... ridiculous things. It's like the punchline to a bad joke: I'd never hurt you, he says, as his hands get tighter and tighter around your neck. I didn't mean it. You made me do it. It's only because I care. Did you ever believe it? Did they expect you to?  
This is the worst joke of all. That this is how it ends; your whole short, confusing, lonely life was leading up to this. You think of Arnold. You think of your Aunt Irene. You think of the girls back at the sorority. You think of Dr. Thompkins. You think of Tom. You think of your mom and dad. You think of Petey, your terrier, who died six months ago. All of this, without words. Just an endless wave of image and feeling. Your entire life rushing over you. Everything you were, and everything you'll never again be.  
And that's all.


End file.
